Igor Markevitch’s renunciation of composition at the age of 29 in favour of a conducting career remains a mystery, given the rapturous responses his youthful music inspired. The extraordinary works on this disc are a case in point. The Sinfonietta is his first truly assured composition, the Cinéma Overture transforms the Blue Danube waltz into a modernist mini-masterpiece, while Le Nouvel Âge is one of his most intense, tightly constructed works, rich in polyrhythms and brimming with mysticism. Lyndon-Gee ‘conducts with an unflagging energy’ (Fanfare).